reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.

We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.

It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.